Fiber-reinforced organic resin matrix composites have a high strength-to-weight ratio or high stiffness-to-weight ratio and desirable fatigue characteristics that make them increasingly popular as a replacement for metal in aerospace applications where weight, strength, or fatigue is critical. Composites today, however, are expensive. There is a need for improved manufacturing processes to reduce touch labor and the forming time.
Prepregs combine continuous, woven, or chopped fibers with an uncured matrix resin, and usually are fiber sheets with a thin film of the matrix. Sheets of prepreg generally are placed (laid-up) directly upon a tool or die having a forming surface contoured to the desired shape of the completed part or are laid-up in a flat sheet which is then draped and formed over the tool or die to the contour of the tool. Lay up can be by hand or with specialized tow or tape placement equipment. Then the resin in the prepreg lay up is consolidated (i.e., cured) in a vacuum bag process in an autoclave (i.e., a pressure oven) to complete the part.
The tools or dies for metal or composite processing typically are formed to close dimensional tolerances. They are massive, must be heated along with the workpiece, and must be cooled prior to removing the completed part. The delay caused to heat and to cool the mass of the tools adds substantially to the overall time necessary to fabricate each part. These delays are especially significant when the manufacturing run is low rate where the dies need to be changed after producing only a few parts of each kind.
In hot press forming, the prepreg is laid-up, bagged (if necessary), and placed between matched metal tools that include forming surfaces that define the internal, external, or both mold lines of the completed part. The tools and composite preform are placed within a press and then the tools, press, and preform are heated. By "preform" we mean the prepreg lay up.
The tooling in autoclave or hot press fabrication is a significant heat sink that consumes substantial energy. Furthermore, the tooling takes significant time to heat the composite material to its consolidation temperature and, after curing the composite, to cool to a temperature at which it is safe to remove the finished composite part.
One method used to reduce the costs of fabricating composite materials is to lay up a flat panel and then to place the flat panel between two metal sheets made from a superplastic alloy. This process is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,657,717. The flat composite panel and metal sheets are then superplastically formed (SPF) against a die having a surface precisely contoured to the final shape of the part.
Attempts have been made to reduce composite fabrication times by actively cooling the tools after forming the composite part. These attempts have shortened the time necessary to produce a composite part, but the time for and cost of heating and cooling remain significant contributors to overall fabrication costs. Designing and making tools with active cooling increases their cost.
Boeing described a process for organic matrix forming and consolidation using induction heating in U.S. Pat No. 5,530,227. There, prepregs were laid up in a flat sheet and were sandwiched between aluminum susceptor facesheets. To ensure an inert atmosphere around the composite during curing and to permit withdrawing volatiles and outgassing from around the composite during the consolidation, we welded the facesheets around their periphery. Such welding unduly impacts the preparation time and the cost for part fabrication. It also ruined the facesheets (i.e., prohibited their reuse). The present invention is a technique that readily and reliably seals the facesheets without the need for welding and permits reuse of the facesheets in certain circumstances. Our "bag-and-seal" technique applies to both resin composite and metal processing, especially in our induction heating workcell.
An example of a metal forming process combines brazing and superplastic forming of metal with a single induction heating cycle. In such a process, Boeing uses a metal pack or retort to contain the multiple sheets in the workpiece in an appropriate inert pressure zone. See U.S. Pat. No. 5,420,400. Here, too, we weld the sheets of the retort along their periphery. The welds are costly to prepare, introduce trimming as a necessary step to recover the completed part, and limit the reuse of the retort sheets since they must be shaved smaller when trimming away the weld to recover the completed part.
For purposes of this description, we use "consolidation" to mean pressure compacting and curing of an organic matrix resin through thermally activated chemical reactions to produce a stable composite. By "forming," we mean shaping the composite or metal and retort in its plastic state. "Forming" may entail superplastic forming, drawing, or some other shaping operation, as those skilled in the art will understand.